“For us it’s always been to avoid soft tissue injuries which we do through intelligent training and through conditioning the players to be able to cope with the demands of Championship football. The contact injuries are the ones that are much more difficult to deal with.

“Tommy Elphick will be a huge loss to us on the pitch but also off the pitch. He ruptured he medial, so when they opened his knee up, they found cruciate damage. That is going to be a long-term injury.

“We’re a bit disappointed for him, you never like to see your players go through this type of situation. It’s a cruciate knee injury so you straight away look at nine months.

“Danny (Simpson) picked up a hip injury against Preston. He wanted to play on in the game, he’s the type of boy that didn’t want to leave his team in the difficult situation they were in. We decided at 60 minutes that we needed to damage limitation to protect him. He hasn’t been able to train since then.

“Jaden (Brown) picked up an ankle injury in a tackle at Brentford, so tomorrow he won’t be available to us either and that’s unfortunately where it is.

“We anticipate that we will be without three of our back four. While we know this is difficult, we as a group are determined to try and find a way to overcome that barrier. If you can’t go over it and you can’t go around it, you have to find a way to get through it.

“We understand what the challenge is for us tomorrow, but we are really focussed and really determined as a group not to make excuses.

“I don’t think it will be ideal tomorrow, it certainly won’t be perfect, but what we will be is a group that is incredibly determined, ready to fight for every ball and playing with an intensity, an energy and a purpose that makes everyone associated with Huddersfield Town proud.”

Birmingham City are currently six points and six places ahead of Town in the Sky Bet Championship table.

Danny Cowley explained what challenges his side faces against a difficult Blues outfit.

“I think it will be a really tough game. I think you’ll find a team that have got the option to go quite quickly to Jutkiewicz, who is a point of reference for them.

“Physically he is really tough for centre-halves to handle but also they’ve got some really technical midfield players.

“They like to roll their wide players in and like to overload you in other areas. They’ve got some really technical players that can unlock even organised compact defences and they’ve got some full-backs that are particularly athletic on the overlap.

“We understand the complexity of the challenge in front of us, I think it’s going to be a really tough game, but we’re back home and we’ve worked really hard these last two weeks.

“I don’t think there will have been another Championship team who worked as hard as we have this international break. We feel fit and strong at this moment.”